Y (Paperback)

January 2013 Indie Next List

“Y is a book about the 'whys' of two lives. Why did one woman abandon her newly born daughter at the door of a YMCA? Why was it so hard for that little girl to find a real home? Why do we sometimes embrace responsibility, and sometimes run away from it? Why are people cruel to the helpless and the innocent? The characters in this book are flawed and stumbling -- in other words, very human and very memorable. The issues of what it means to be a family and the meaning of 'home' are challenged, remolded, and puzzled into a story that is not always easy to read, but is difficult to put down and is impossible to forget.”
— Jackie Blem, Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO
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Description

"A gorgeous, moving debut....Marjorie Celona writes with acute sensitivity to how a child sees her world and renders a character readers will love in all her glorious self-doubt" (The Boston Globe).

Marjorie Celona's internationally acclaimed debut, longlisted for the Giller Prize, chronicles a wise-beyond-her-years child abandoned as a newborn on the doorstep of the local YMCA.

Growing up in foster homes, Shannon chooses to define life on her own terms, but she never stops wondering why she was abandoned. Brilliantly interwoven with Shannon's story is the tale of her mother, Yula, a girl herself who is facing a desperate fate in the hours and days leading up to Shannon's birth. As past and present converge, Celona's beautiful novel tells an unforgettable story of identity, inheritance, and, ultimately, forgiveness.